Why You “Can’t Get No Satisfaction”

The act of love-making comes with many benefits to human health. However, not everyone feels the utmost satisfaction in the experience. A study published in the “Archives of Sexual Behaviour” looks over the reasons why.

Sex goes beyond basic biology of reproduction. It is a very passionate act to the most passionate of couples. However, there are slight differences in satisfaction between men and women.

To conduct this experiment, researchers used a sample of 544 sexually active male and female undergraduates on a college campus. Roughly 90% were heterosexual. All responded to a survey based on satisfaction/motivation. The reasons vary between men and women, being: arousal, to express oneself, out of revenge, to relieve stress, for social status, to boost self-esteem, to achieve an orgasm, to burn calories, to try out new moves and techniques, and finally, out of love and commitment.

Love and commitment ranked as the strongest motive of reaching full satisfaction for both genders. For both, the motive of having sex for self-esteem and for trade (whether it is to win a job or to pay for drugs) led to a lower satisfaction. Women, who have more motives than men, found higher sexual satisfaction when their motive was for pleasure and expression. On the contrary, having sex for a new experience brought lower satisfaction, but only in women. The leading cause of total contentment is love and commitment.

It isn’t clear why women have more motives of sex than men do, but the authors of the publication speculate that it is because of women’s role of supplying the sex, ergo deciding how and why the act will happen. They have more control in such situations.

Further research will be conducted, this time taking place outside of a college campus.